Letting Rosebank go ahead would devastate UK seas and must be stopped, says a new letter from the Ocean Alliance Against Offshore Drilling.

Chris Packham, Lizzie Daly, Megan McCubbin and other members of the Ocean Alliance and allies make clear that approving the largest undeveloped oilfield in the UK would be a disaster for our ocean.

The Ocean Alliance calls on the UK Government to make the right decision and reject this field, protecting our seas and climate from the guaranteed harm Rosebank would bring.

Marine life at risk

Rosebank will directly degrade precious marine havens and wreak havoc for the wildlife that call UK seas home.

This project’s lack of regard for marine habitats is clear – shockingly, a pipeline has already been built through the Faroe-Shetland Sponge Belt protected area. Ripping through these rare and vulnerable habitats completely contradicts the positive progress recently made to protect this area from bottom-towed fishing gear by the Scottish Government.

Rosebank would also take place in waters important to countless species. Humpback whales, bottlenose dolphins, and endangered sei whales are all at risk.
For the sake of UK marine life, we cannot let Rosebank go ahead.

Spills have already started

Two oil spills have already been recorded as taking place in the Rosebank field. This is before commercial oil extraction has even begun.

A project of Rosebank’s size would add to the toxic mess of daily oil and chemical spills that take place across our seas. These small scale, chronic spills make marine life suffer and weaken the health of our ocean.

Approving Rosebank would be giving the green light to even more pollution.

Rosebank would blow a hole in our carbon budget

Rosebank would emit an eye-watering 254 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent – a figure entirely incompatible with the UK’s climate commitments.

With marine heatwaves tearing across our seas and coastal communities being pushed to the brink by extreme weather, this volume of emissions is unjustifiable. The science is clear that we cannot allow any new oil and gas developments in the North Sea if we want to limit global heating to 1.5C . One of this size makes even more of a mockery of the UK’s international climate obligations and the government’s duty to protect local people from the impacts of the climate crisis.

A healthy ocean is our greatest carbon store and most powerful buffer against climate breakdown. Drilling would destroy wildlife habitats and likely disturb large quantities of carbon in the seabed, worsening the sky-high emissions from the development. All of this would undermine the power of our ocean to mitigate against the climate crisis exactly when we need it most.

We cannot allow our ocean to pay the price whilst Big Oil takes home the profit. If the UK Government is serious about its climate and nature commitments, it will do the right thing and stop the Rosebank field from going ahead.